When facing a situation like this, many people would conclude that women just aren't smart enough or interested enough in math to be engineers. Instead, Sterling concluded that girls and women were being steered away from STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) by social stereotypes. So she decided to make it her life's mission to erase the gender gap in STEM by creating GoldieBlox, a book series and toy construction set that lets kids imitate Goldie, a girl inventor who solves problems by building simple machines.

As admirable as Sterling's mission appears to be, I have a different explanation of why there are more male engineers than female engineers. My view is backed up by a good deal of scientific evidence, but, despite this, I guarantee one thing: My explanation will both gratify and enrage people on both sides of this debate.

Women Are Smart Enough to Be Engineers

Despite herculean efforts to prove otherwise, men and women tend to score equivalently on tests of raw IQ. When it comes to mathematics—a core requirement for engineering—women score on average only 32 points lower than men on SAT mathematics—a mere 3% difference. While men outnumber women in the "genius" SAT math score range (700-800), the ratio is not that large (1.6 to 1). Even with that difference, it is not the case that more undergraduate men than women are selected by top engineering programs. Of the top STEM programs in the country, most have male-to-female undergraduate student ratios close to 1:1.

The percentage of women (45%) employed as beginning assistant professors in STEM fields is about the same as men (55%). But their career trajectories diverge substantially after that. Only 38% of women make tenure, and only 22% are promoted to full professor.

Does this mean women can't handle the job? The bulk of the evidence on this "leaky pipeline" points to one simple fact: Establishing a science career is incompatible with having a family.

The demands of caring for young children are incompatible with the demands of establishing a research lab in preparation for tenure review, yet the tenure push coincides exactly with a young scientist's prime reproductive years—and that is true for both men and women. But women are less willing to sacrifice having and caring for children than are men, and so they drop out of academic research at twice the rate of men.

One option women scientists have chosen in recent years is to step out of (or never enter) the tenure track in favor of taking positions that are annually renewed, such as adjunct professorships. The difficulty with this option is that once one is off the tenure track, it is virtually impossible to get back on it. Those who manage to make it through to tenure often reduce their research productivity for a few years while their children are young, thereby making their dossiers seem less impressive than their male counterparts who refuse to slow down to accommodate the demands of childrearing.

Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University, argues that the solution to this problem (and the salary gender gap in general in the workforce) is for the workplace to embrace flexibility. Outdated notions of traditional career trajectories should be discarded, and emphasis should instead be placed on results regardless of where or when the work was done.

Men Do Not Outnumber Women in All STEM Fields

Is it the case that men vastly outnumber women in STEM careers? Well, it depends on the STEM career. Look at the percentage of STEM bachelors degrees awarded to female students for the last two decades.

Percent STEM Bachelors Degrees Awarded to Women

Notice that there is no gender difference in the biosciences, the social sciences, or mathematics, and not much of a difference in the physical sciences. But women are "underrepresented" in engineering and computer science, and they are "overrepresented" in psychology (NSF breaks psychology out into a separate category due the very large number of students who major in this field.) Here is the breakdown for PhD degrees:

Percent of PhD STEM degrees awarded to women

So it isn't the case that women are not interested in STEM. They are just as interested in the biosciences and social sciences, a little less interested in math and physics, and not much interested in computer science and engineering.

Notice that women are as likely as men to be biological scientists, medical scientists, and chemists. They are much less likely than men to be computer scientists or physical scientists. Even when we look within a field we find similar differences in male and female interests. Here is where women and men tend to congregate in medical subspecialties. Notice that women are more likely to prefer pediatrics general medicine, and general medicine to surgery. In other words, women prefer to spend their work time interacting with patients rather than tinkering with the organs inside their patients.

Percent of female physicians by specialty

If we look inside the Ivory Tower of academia, we find the same distribution

Women in academic STEM fields

If we look at the entire workforce (not just STEM fields), we find this:

Women in the workforce

The data clearly show that women are more likely than men to be employed in "people oriented professions", such as nurses, therapists, and teachers than they are to be employed in "object oriented professions" such as computer scientists or engineers.

Women and Men are Interested in Different STEM Fields

One interpretation of the gender difference in STEM careers (and the workforce in general) is that women are not making these choices in order to study what is intrinsically interesting to them but because they are herded into areas that are more "gender appropriate".

Another common but somewhat misguided explanation for female underrepresentation in STEM is that while girls and young women may be just as able as young men, they are not as interested in science and engineering. From early adolescence, girls report less interest in math and science careers than boys do (Turner et al. 2008), and among children identified as mathematically precocious, girls were less likely than boys to pursue STEM careers as adults (Lubinski and Benbow 2006). Girls’ lower reported interest in STEM may be partially explained by social attitudes and beliefs about whether it is appropriate for girls to pursue these subjects and careers.

It is this assumption that drove Debbie Sterling to found GoldiBlox. The problem with this "blank slate" interpretation of gender differences is that it is at odds with the results of most developmental and comparative studies. Newborn girls prefer to look at faces while newborn boys prefer to look at mechanical stimuli (such as mobiles). Girls and juvenile female monkeys show a greater interest in young infants than do boys and juvenile male monkeys. But when it comes to toys, a consistent finding is that boys and juvenile male monkeys strongly prefer mechanical toys over plush toys or dolls, while girls and female juvenile monkeys are more eclectic in their tastes, showing no significant preference between the two. (See this for summary of this research.) It is not difficult to see how such early emerging preferences can end up shaping career choices later on: Women tend to gravitate toward science fields that focus on living things and agents, men to science fields that focus on objects.

In fact, it is difficult to avoid seeing irony in the fact that Sterling is not employed as an engineer. Instead, she is CEO of a company that makes science and engineering toys for children.

Why Close the Engineering Gap?

To those who insist that large amounts of money must be channeled into "closing the gap" in all STEM fields, I ask this simple question: Why?

If women simply are not as interested in being engineers as they are in being biologists, why should they be cajoled and tempted (and sometimes shamed) into being engineers?

Some have argued that women keep themselves poor by pursuing careers in low-paying fields (such as nursing or teaching) rather than careers in high-paying fields (such as engineering computer science). So I would ask another question: Is the work traditionally done by women really of intrinsically less value to society and the GDP than is the work done traditionally by men?

Actually, we have some data on this. The percentage of male nurses increased from 3% in 1970 to 10% in 2011. And with this increase has come a nurse gender wage gap: In 2011, the average female nurse earned $51,100, 16% less than the $60,700 earned by the average man in the same job.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that male-dominated professions are high-status professions precisely because they are male-dominated, and female-dominated professions are low status precisely because they are female-dominated. When men move into traditionally female-dominated professions, the salaries and status levels of those professions rise.

Rather than rushing to traditionally male professions to shore up our status and our income levels, perhaps we need to reject the implicit belief that whatever men are doing must be more important and valuable and whatever women are doing must be the career dregs that men fobbed off on us.

In other words, we should not be ashamed if our interests differ from men's, and we should place greater intrinsic and monetary value on the work we like and want to do.

Using the same report, median salary for electrical engineers was about $92,000, with a range from about $57,000 to $140,000. So on average, nursing does pay significantly less than electrical engineering, particularly at the top end. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172071.htm

I believe this is predominantly a cultural phenomenon. You mentioned that by adolescence that girls tend to be less interested in math. I have seen data that test scores in math are equivalent for both sexes until fourth grade and then, in the US, the scores for girls decline even though this trend does not happen in other countries (e.g. China, India, etc. ).

I am an electrical engineer in my late 30s. In the US organization in my company, there are 5 women out of roughly 150 field engineers. In our China, Taiwan, Singapore, Philippines, and India facilities approximately 40% of the 200 engineers are women. ( Japan not so much since that is still largely a cultural effect ).

Our engineering work is very much customer-facing and, while technical, also requires soft skills and provides an extremely flexible work-life balance with decent pay ( average of about 140k ), so this work would be attractive to most women from a personal perspective.

Engineering is much different than the other sciences as it requires high spatial ability and this is not something that schools in the US seem to teach at all. While computational math comes quite easily to most, once children get into more complex and abstract math, many are easily lost without a good foundation in spatial skills. Boys are often given more toys and games that build these logic and spatial skills early ( puzzles, chess, video games, building toys, tanagrams, etc. ) that I do believe gives them an edge later on.

Thank you for your comment, but I'm afraid there are several inaccuracies that need to be addressed.

I appreciate that you strongly believe the gender gap in engineering is primarily cultural, but this belief is simply not supported by the data.

Let's look at India, for example. The same gender difference in preference for biosciences over engineering is found there: "India ranks highly in female representation in science and engineering enrollments, at around 65%, with numbers increasing to 80.4% in the biological, medical and life sciences (including nursing and ayurvedic professions). While female representation in engineering and physics dropped to 32% to 35.8% in 2005-07, this is still the highest rate of the countries studied." http://www.elsevier.com/connect/study-reports-indias-slow-progress-in-advancing-women-in-s...

You state that boys are given more toys to play with that require spatial skills, yet ignore the data cited in the blog showing that a gender difference in toy preferences exists not just in humans by in other primate species as well.

You also state that "test scores in math are equivalent for both sexes until fourth grade and then, in the US, the scores for girls decline even though this trend does not happen in other countries (e.g. China, India, etc. )." Yet as I took pains to explain in this blog, the gender gap in engineering is NOT due to differences in math ability. There is no appreciable difference between men and women on SAT math scores, and no difference at all on GRE quantitative scores. So the belief that American girls are steered away from math due to differences in ability or peer/societal pressure is not supported by the actual data.

In The Sexual Paradox, Susan Pinker points out that the countries that offer women the most financial stability and legal protections in job choice, have the greatest gender split in careers (e.g., Percent of women in physics - Philippines: 30%; Canada: 5%). Also the article entitled "As Barriers Disappear, Some Gender Gaps Widen" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/science/09tier.html?_r=0

Also, I would again ask why it disturbs us so much that women are "under-represented" in engineering--so much so that NSF pours millions of dollars into programs aimed at attracting more females to the field. Yet even larger gender gaps exist in other fields where females predominate, such as nursing, social work, and K-12 education. Why do these differences not elicit the same degree consternation, outrage, fear, shame, and so on? Why are there not programs aimed at attracting more men to these fields? Why do we have such double standards when it comes to an overpowering desire to "close the gender gap"?

Also, I would again ask why it disturbs us so much that women are "under-represented" in engineering--so much so that NSF pours millions of dollars into programs aimed at attracting more females to the field. Yet even larger gender gaps exist in other fields where females predominate, such as nursing, social work, and K-12 education. Why do these differences not elicit the same degree consternation, outrage, fear, shame, and so on? Why are there not programs aimed at attracting more men to these fields? Why do we have such double standards when it comes to an overpowering desire to "close the gender gap"?

I would argue that it is because feminists are chasing a boogeyman that doesn't exist.

The other possibility is that there is money in it. For example breast cancer pink is everywhere now... It is not the most common cancer, and it is not the most deadly cancer, and research for it has gotten no where in the last 30 years but its still everywhere.

I think you should take a hard look at unconscious gender bias. One unfortunate attribute of it is that societies who are proudest of their equitable policies are most likely to suffer from this bias. I have a study to reference somewhere, but I am too lazy to look it up. I am sure you could find it. This is the reason women are underrepresented in engineering in places like Canada.

I happen to have first hand experience as I am an engineer in R&D in software in Canada. My career and my female colleagues' career are littered with problems as a result of unconscious bias. It is certainly not lack of interest in staying and succeeding in the field.

More successful woman doing interesting work in engineering will interest more girls to study it. It is hard to visualize yourself in a field that includes no one like you enjoying herself.

Let's face it, girls will always need to learn what is there to learn in school about engineering. But Boys are born to be engineers. History proves that during the stone age, men were responsible of building houses, planting garden, telling their family when to plan the crops, dealing with livestocks, building wells, digging drainage and the list goes on. Women are Managers and no one our house is worthy enough to tell mothers how to manage household staffs such as when to do the next shopping and what to pay, women are born to be managers. Men (boys), think fast and they are very good at it when problem arises, thus engineering is meant for people who can think and think fast-and men are naturally capable of doing so.

Let's face it, girls will always need to learn what is there to learn in school about engineering. But Boys are born to be engineers. History proves that, during the stone age, men were responsible of building houses, planting garden, telling their family when to plan the crops, dealing with livestocks, building wells, digging drainage and the list goes on. Women are Managers and no one is worthy enough to tell mothers how to manage household staffs,such as when to do the next shopping and what to pay, women are born to be managers. Men (boys), think fast and they are very good at it when problem arises, thus engineering is meant for people who can think and think fast-and men are naturally capable of doing so.
If try to force the nature then the nature will shows us that we are WRONG just as we burn fossil fuels and now we are complaining about are own mistake. Hence, putting men and women in the wrong from a natural perspective would be the same and the society would collapse as a result. We've seen s issues in our modern society such as a lot of kids involve in drugs this days than before (according to http://frameworksinstitute.org/assets/files/PDF/youth_public_perceptions.pdf, why? the answer: there's no one to manage household affairs. Both Mothers and Fathers are doing Fathers job-"No more managers in the business, both the managers and the engineers are doing the same job".

Let's face it, girls will always need to learn what is there to learn in school about engineering. But Boys are born to be engineers. History proves that, during the stone age, men were responsible of building houses, planting garden, telling their family when to plan the crops, dealing with livestocks, building wells, digging drainage and the list goes on. Women are Managers and no one is worthy enough to tell mothers how to manage household staffs,such as when to do the next shopping and what to pay, women are born to be managers. Men (boys), think fast and they are very good at it when problem arises, thus engineering is meant for people who can think and think fast-and men are naturally capable of doing so.
If try to force the nature then the nature will shows us that we are WRONG just as we burn fossil fuels and now we are complaining about are own mistake. Hence, putting men and women in the wrong from a natural perspective would be the same and the society would collapse as a result. We've seen s issues in our modern society such as a lot of kids involve in drugs this days than before (according to http://frameworksinstitute.org/assets/files/PDF/youth_public_perceptions.pdf, why? the answer: there's no one to manage household affairs. Both Mothers and Fathers are doing Fathers job-"No more managers in the business, both the managers and the engineers are doing the same job".

Let's face it, girls will always need to learn what is there to learn in school about engineering. But Boys are born to be engineers. History proves that, during the stone age, men were responsible of building houses, planting garden, telling their family when to plan the crops, dealing with livestocks, building wells, digging drainage and the list goes on. Women are Managers and no one is worthy enough to tell mothers how to manage household staffs,such as when to do the next shopping and what to pay, women are born to be managers. Men (boys), think fast and they are very good at it when problem arises, thus engineering is meant for people who can think and think fast-and men are naturally capable of doing so.
If try to force the nature then the nature will shows us that we are WRONG just as we burn fossil fuels and now we are complaining about are own mistake. Hence, putting men and women in the wrong from a natural perspective would be the same and the society would collapse as a result. We've seen s issues in our modern society such as a lot of kids involve in drugs this days than before (according to http://frameworksinstitute.org/assets/files/PDF/youth_public_perceptions.pdf, why? the answer: there's no one to manage household affairs. Both Mothers and Fathers are doing Fathers job-"No more managers in the business, both the managers and the engineers are doing the same job".

Very interesting article. I'm a female engineer, and I am well above the cutoffs for intelligence listed in the post. Although I went to school recently my department was less than 20% female. My first job was less that 10% female.

I'm also part of the statistic about people encouraging young women to become engineers, as I've spent a good chunk of time developing outreach programs for young people (especially girls).

As far as why it's important to increase the number of women in engineering, the field is very much still an old boys club. It's not just about wanting to be an engineer, it's about wanting to be an engineer enough to fight off the 1970's-esque discrimination that is very much alive. And telling women they aren't good enough to be engineers starts way before you get to work. I've taught classes of girls selected for high performance in science and technology who have told me that their teacher said that they should focus on "practical" careers like hairdresser, or maid. Not to say these aren't good jobs, just that any person should have more than two options for their future.

Even I have struggled with whether or not I belonged in the industry; not because I wanted to get away from engineering but because I was tired of being asked daily if I'd considered being a secretary. As long as there aren't a reasonable amount of women in our industry, it will continue to be easy to bully women with massive potential from chasing their dreams.

And on the other hand I've never met a woman who claims she was forced into engineering. I do not believe this initiative lock women in the shackles of a terrible career; I think it will allow them to be whatever they want to be.

For what it's worth, I think that there should be more male nurses as well.

Often I've read about programs that encourage women/girls to pursue certain careers and programs to help and encourage women to succeed. Why don't I read about similar programs for boys/men?

Even TV shows reflect this. I was watching The Big Bang Theory and in one episode they gave a lecture to young women to encourage them to get into the sciences. Why was this restricted to women? I'm not referring just to the show. Why aren't boys being encouraged?

The reason I ask is because of the vast number of articles which are mostly a reflection of a feminine bias. The reason I ask you (personally) is because while you also do this (this article is an example), most of what you write doesn't give a sexist viewpoint, so I suspect that you would be less biased. Hopefully I'm correct in this assumption.

OK, I think I understand what you're asking, and here is my answer. I am going to be long-winded, so bear with me.

High prestige, high salaried fields (e.g., computer science, engineering, finance)tend to have far larger proportions of men in them than women. The assumption is that this disparity reflects sexist attitudes that keep women out.

There is certainly evidence of sexism in the path to engineering and computer science careers. Little girls tend to be discouraged from displaying an interest in object-oriented toys (like trucks and Legos), and instead continually have dolls and tutus pressed into their hands. In school, peer pressure turns them away from math and science classes, and if they insist on taking them, they are often ridiculed by peers and overlooked by teachers. By the time they reach high school and college, they are permanently turned off of STEM career paths. So efforts like the NSF initiative and the episode on the Big Bang Theory are attempts to balance all of these discouraging and negative messages that girls and women receive about going into STEM. (I loved that the female scientists were dressed as Disney princesses while they talked about their passion for science in that episode--the message being that you could be a "normal" girl and still be a scientist.)

As you point out, though, and as the Big Bang Theory also amply demonstrates, there is a negative cultural stereotype that discourages boys and men from pursuing STEM careers, namely, STEM is for socially awkward nerds who can't get girlfriends. No real man would go there. So you are absolutely right that we need more programs to attract both sexes to STEM fields.

The acculturation explanation is, I think, only part of the answer. There are other answers that should be considered.

One possible explanation for the dearth of women in computer science and engineering (the highest paid of the STEM fields) is that women's interests end up attracting them to careers that they find intrinsically rewarding by are characterized by low prestige and low pay (e.g., social work, K-12 teaching, non-specialty nursing), or to STEM fields that focus on living things but pay less than computer science and engineering (e.g., biology, chemistry, medicine, psychology).

In contrast, men's interests end up attracting them to high paying prestigious careers, two of which are engineering and computer science. These fields require a high degree of facility in mathematical symbol manipulation, and tests consistently show that the tiny number of individuals who are at the extreme upper end of these abilities by and large tend to be male. Hence, these fields end up being dominated by men.

Another question to ask, though, is why fields like computer science and engineering are held in such high esteem and pay so well--even compared to fields like social work or even medicine? Is it because of market forces--that the former fields yield products for which large numbers of people are willing to pay premium prices? Or is it are they so prestigious and so well-paid precisely because men are interested in them? There have been studies showing that when men enter a field, the status of that field rises where as the reverse happens when women enter a field. So from this viewpoint, computer science and engineering are high status, high paying careers simply because they attract more men.

Another possibility is that men seek out high paying, high prestige careers, and simply will not accept low pay or low status positions if they can avoid it. As a result, they tend to gravitate toward careers that promise high pay, whatever those might be. Once there, they push salaries up higher by demanding ever greater increases in compensation.

As you can see, this is a complex issue, and I for one and disturbed that the Zeitgeist now is simply that the reason females are "underrepresented" in computer science and engineering is due to sexist cultural stereotypes and sexism in schools and workplaces. AS the data show, women are not underrepresented in many other STEM fields. The fact that there are such huge efforts devoted to attracting women to just two subfields of STEM and virtually no effort devoted to attracting more men to (e.g.,) nursing (where there is a chronic shortage of well-trained professionals) should give us pause.

I think engineering and the sciences are well paid because there is a monetary return on innovation and invention (technology). BTW, these are the fields that I respect the most because every new discovery creates a stepping stone for future advancements.

I would have to question the idea that the pay is higher because it is male dominated, but I'll keep my mind open.

There is one issue that you mentioned that interest me. You said that as more women get into certain high paying fields, the status of the field drops. I'm going to assume that the pay also drops. Perhaps this is why more women are getting hired over men? Equal productivity for less money. That's just a question...

Keep up your work on A.I., I believe it to be the next major revolutionary advancement of humanity. Machines have gone far at replacing human labor, so I often wonder what changes A.I. will bring.

I really appreciate your response and I want you to know that I don't question your intelligence nor question your experiences.

You sound like someone that shouldn't be treated as you were. Perhaps your mistreatment was based on jealousy more so than sexism. I worked in a salary position for many years and the amount of backstabbing was extraordinary. If I hadn't experienced it myself, I wouldn't believe it. My girlfriend who taught school all her life recants stories, one after another, of school politics gone awry.

Anyway, when I make responses or ask questions, I try to do so without being biased or judgmental. I know it doesn't always seem that way and from some of the responses I get back, I wasn't very clear about my intentions. Oh well, that's to be expected...

I know I'm late to the table on this topic...but I read an article recently that talked about how girls have less tolerance for low grades than boys...and so, once they hit some of the really tough courses in STEM fields and get C's or whatever, they transfer into something easier. (And that can happen in high school - well before college majors are chosen.)

I've certainly seen that in my own kids. My boys didn't care much at all about grades - but they both graduated with technical graduate degrees and got good jobs. My girl demanded straight A's and, although she started out a math major, ended up in elementary school teaching.

This highlights a problem with the end of your analysis, on why it matters if women are in computer engineering or not. Information technology is transforming society in ways psychology is not. Not only are men the authors of epoch-making changes, but they are reaping the financial benefits. While men take risks to establish new industries, women it seems are, at best, vying for top management positions. This is not the equality feminists were looking for.